Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Plotline:
Over a period of 20 or 30 years, not one but five groups of British
MPs
and high-ranking members of the Thatcher and Blair governments took
part in sexually abusing minors, going so far as to occasionally kill
their victims for sport and to kill witnesses who try to go to the
police. The best part is that they keep it all quiet through the
Official Secrets Act. Nah. No publisher would buy such an outrageous
plot, even if it were true. Which it is.

Bread
Crumbs:
In the five years since the Great Recession reportedly ended, the US
economy is still 5% below its potential and a full 10% below the
level it would have reached if the housing bust had not have
happened. Hmm, think this has anything to do with the slump in oil
prices? Merry
Christiemass:
All it will take to permit public water systems in NJ to be
privatized without a public vote is the governor's signature on a
bill now on his desk. Best part of the bill is the section that lets
the folks who win the right to the system to bill the customers for
the price they had to pay. Then bump up prices to cover their
salaries and bonuses and political contributions. Open
Wide And Say Ah-ha!Genentech
has a new and more expensive drug, costing $2,000 a dose, to replace
an earlier version that iss equally effective but costs only $50 a
dose. So why would a doctor prescribe
the more expensive version? Can you spell 'bribes'?

Big
Dog:The
United Nations Security Council (Uncle
Sam, prop.) has
rejected a resolution denouncing Israeli occupation of Palestine.
How
many more decades will our collective shame over the Holocaust keep
indemnifying Israel for obvious violations of international law?

Market
Magic:
The courts have cleared the way for a Florida for-profit charter
school company to take over the entire York City School District in
Pennsylvania. They promise to take all the state and federal school
support money plus all the local school tax funds, pay themselves
handsomely and teach the little brats on the cheap. It's becoming
the American way, and depends on smoke and mirrors – like so much
these days.

Credentials:
Republicans really hate taxes and think they should be drasticly cut
or even done away with, but outright tax evasion is frowned on – as
former NY congressman Michael
Grimm learned
when Boehner
invited
him to resign.

Fire
Up The Hot Tub:
2014 is the first year ever in which the temperature in Anchorage did
not go below zero even once. The average has been 25 sub-zero days
every year. Trust,
But Verify:
Americans by and large support their local police, but 86% of us
would like them to wear always-on video
cams and 87% think having an independent investigation into incidents
in
which
unarmed individuals are killed by the police. Even the black ones.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

"An
economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature
to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.
… It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.”
Pope
Francis. Better
Luck Next Time:
German officials say that a USB stick belonging to an aide of Angela
Merkel had been infected with malware that has been linked to the NSA
and Britain's GCHQ electronic spy agencies.

Half
A Loaf:
Whle the Senate report shed some light on the CIA's torture of at
least 119 'detainees', it did not cover those who were 'rendered' by
the agency and delivered to countries such as Libya and Egypt to be
tortured, nor does it touch on torture carried out by the US
military all around the globe. If all that torture was so vital to
our
triumphs in Iraq and Afghanistan, how come we're not having a big
victory parade to celebrate – after 13 years - the end of the
longest war in our history? Y'know, march
the terrorists in chains, down the mall and around the monuments? Christmas,
Present:Having
done about all the damage it
can do to
the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has begun air
strikes in Somalia.

Brace
Yourself:
Come next week people who do not believe in climate change or taxes
on the rich, much less evolution, and have but a nodding acquaintance
with reality will be taking over much of the government. They will
cut taxes to raise government revenue and cut social support systems
to free the poor from government interference in their lives. They
will take rapid strides to prevent future voter fraud – even though
only 31
actual cases have been discovered in the last billion votes cast.
It'll probably involve issuing each of us individual identity
documents, to protect our freedom and track our votes. They also
think torture works, so just shut up and go along. Dreamtime:
Close your eyes and imagine the US with nearly twice today's
population; at the current rate (0.7% growth per year) that will
before the end of the century. Makes
other forms of doom seem mild, doesn't it?

Quoted:
“We will need writers who can remember freedom.” Ursula K.
LeGuin Various
Hopes:
In Spain, where the government has stiff
fines for 'unauthorized protests' against the government, there
is an encouraging rise in populist movements that want to overthrow
the two-party system. In Greece the parliament rejected the
'compromise' candidate for president picked
by the Germans,
which will force a
quick national election for the post.

Jackpot:
A man who was filming Baton
Rouge cops
making an arrest was choked and slammed to the ground. Lawsuit to
follow. Remember, keep your cell-phone ready, with your lawyer's
number taped to it.

Fear
of Flying:
A Fox host speculated that the reason Asian passenger aircraft keep
falling out of the sky is not terrorists
– they only operate in good weather according to a
CNN expert – but because they use the metric system and
that just doesn't measure up.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Empire
Strikes Back:The
US has been stockpiling military arms and equipment pulled from the
failed war in Afghanistan
in depots in Kuwait, in anticipation of an urgent need for the dogs
of war in Iraq this spring. The
US is also preparing to increase
the number of mercenariesprivate
contractors in Iraq as part of the same offensive. Most
will be discharged from the US military before being shipped back
to
Baghdad.

Aw,
Shucks:
Turns out that the dastardly North Koreans did not hack Sony to
protect Kim's honor, rather a self-righteous bunch of blackmailers
called The
Lizard Squad most likely did the deed with info gathered from an
insider.

Coping
Mechanism:
Instead of quantitative easing to address Russia's flailing economy,
Putin has put a cap on the price of vodka. It won't help the
economy, but it'll give 'em something to do in the bread
lines.

Handicapping:
The German finance minister says that any new Greek government will
have to abide by all the agreements the previous hand-picked bunch
signed, and the current Greek Prime Minister thinks it would be “best
for the country” to do away with democracy and elections and
all that stuff that might get in the way of Berlin draining the last
few ounces of ouzo from the country.

About
Time:
Iran has been field testing a “suicide drone”. A poor man's
cruise missile, the drone is designed to plunge into its targets and
explode. Brace
Yourself:
It seems that politicians do not always tell the truth, and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment
Pacts are not about free trade. They are secret
pacts designed
to neuter
those pesky
national
and state-level laws that might inconvenience the looters.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

The
Fundamentals:
A seasonal history lesson: According to the book of Matthew, Jesus
was born in 4 BC. Luke holds out for 6 AD. John doesn't adhere to
any of the timelines described by Matthew, Mark or Luke in tracing
the Messiah's life. To add to the confusion, the genealogies
of the Christ
child as
portrayed
by Matthew and Luke are completely different.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Dear
Santa:
In terms of child poverty, the United States ranks
36th out of the 41 wealthiest nations.There
are 2.5 million homeless
children in the US,
an
all-time
high. 65%
of US children live in a home that receives aid from the federal
government. 45%
of US children belong to low income families.45%
of African-American children in the
US live in “areas of
concentrated poverty” (slums).
The
average American is 40%
poorer today than before the recession, and 20%
of US households
will be
able to eat Christmas dinner
thanks
to food stamps, about that many more courtesy of various food banks
and charities. Enjoy yours.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The
Grinch Who Stole Everything:
Various of the Usual Suspects are negotiating a Trade In Services
Agreement (TISA), which will significantly affect your life in a wide
variety of ways. No, you have not heard of it. Or if you have, you
have no idea what they are planning on. And you will not know what
gets decided until five years after the treaty goes into effect. By
mutual agreement (which does not include you and me) the negotiations
are secret. And – by terms of the treaty – the provisions of the
treat will remain secret for five years. No, it will not be debated
and passed on by the Congress in open session. Back
In The Saddle Again:
US Special Forces have inflicted “heavy casualties” on ISIS
while “advising” Iraqi soldiers repellingan
attack in western Anbar province. Where's
Kemal? Where's The Army?
Watching Recep Erdogan drag Turkey back to the middle ages with
dreams of a rekindled Ottoman Empire based in Koranic fundamentalism
is disheartening. For years he has been imprisoning journalists who
dared
to not
kiss his hem, and of late he's taken to rounding up TV personalities
who dare mention the rampant corruption of his regime. Of late it
has been the slow imposition of sharia
precepts on
the schools. Now Turkey has decided that while doctors must give
all patients the care and treatment they have a right to,
Cesarean birth is not a right. They're only women, let'em
suffer. Better that the mother
should die.

Under
The Tree:
The US is shipping 10 Apache attack helicopters to Egypt for the
dictatorship to use in putting down civil unrest. Being
Israel: One
of the advantages Israel has over other nations is a dispensation
from Yahweh to ignore international laws and rulings that it finds
inconvenient. The latest is a UN demand that Israel pay Lebanon $850
million in damages stemming
from
a 2006 airstrike that caused an immense oil spill. Don't
bother to mention war crimes, Palestinian rights or international
nuclear weapons laws. They've got a hall pass from God.

Home
For Christmas:
The US has shipped 'home' four Afghan prisoners who survived
interrogation and ten years of living in cages in Guantanamo before
it was discovered that they were not the worst of the worst, but
merely collateral damage. And collaterally damaged.

Tradition:Once
again the US is seeking to overthrow
the
democratically elected government of Venezuela.Say/Do:
Pakistan,
revolted by the barbarity of recent militant attacks, has begun
hanging captured militants in revenge for their uncivilized actions.

Monday, December 22, 2014

Now
Playing:
Why amid all of the fawning interviews with Dick Chaney and his
henchmen was there not a single interview with one of the victims?

Counting
Down:
According to BofA, "the
world has become addicted to central bank stimulus.” It
sees over 50% of the entire world''s GDP as an artifact propped
up by central bankers' zero interest rates, and the same is true, it
says, of over 80% of global stock prices. About 1.5 billion people
already are faced with negative interest rates on their savings. All
this, and more, according to BofA, “is evidence of a 1930's-style
depression.” Just wait until the wise men try to put the
trillions raised by QE back in the box. It'll be fun, and nobody
knows if it can be done. Just
Because:
Obama says the Sony hack was not “an act of war” by North Korean
any more than ongoing US cyber attacks on North Korea, Iran and
pretty much the rest of the world are.

Tanks
For The Memory:The
Republicans,
ever vigilant to trim the government budget of wasteful social
spending, included $120 million in the new defense budget to buy
tanks the Army has repeatedly said it does not want and does not
need. But the factory that makes them is in Lima, Ohio and the
Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services
Committee is headed by Mike Turner, Republican Representative from...
Ohio.

Dance
Card:
In a tantalizingly vague announcement, Qatar
assured
the Egyptian military dictatorship
government its “full support”. For what wasn't clear.

Sucker
Punched:
Now as the markets are tottering under oil's assault, the American
consumer expects
the good times to last for at least eight more years. Well, not
quite “the good times”, but they do think the long recovery won't
become an actual recession. They are also leaving cookies and milk
out for Santa.

Santa
Baby:
The White House and Pentagon have asked Santa
a federal judge to let the administration off with a sack of coal
instead of making them release those thousands of photos of US troops
physically
and sexually abusing their
prisoners.

Layaway:
So far the US has pretty much wasted $1 billion on air strikes
against ISIS.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

“Taking
care not to leave permanent marks doesn't mean it's not torture, it
just means you're trying to make sure you don't get caught.”Kevin
Drum

Hum
Along:
“Where
have all the profits gone? Gone to corporate buybacks, everyone...”

More
Than The Temperature's
Rising:
NOAA says that perhaps 'proof positive' of climate change would be US
coastal cities routinely seeing more than 30 days each year of the
ocean flooding their streets. Annapolis; Wilmington, and Washington,
D.C., are already there. Baltimore, Atlantic City and at least six
others will experience that level by 2020. And by 2050 nearly every
US coastal city will have such “routine” flooding. Not storm
driven waves, but 30 or more days a year of 'alta
acqua'. Long before the end of the century it will be every day
in
most of those cities, not just twice a month. Truth
Will Out?
British police view claims that (former?) Members of Parliament were
part of a ring of pedophiles who raped and murdered young boys as
“credible and true.” Maybe
one of these days this investigation will gain some traction. And
some public anger.

Front
and Center:
Reader/Commenter Blissex, noting that nearly every demographic group
in the US is willing to accept torture as somehow
justified/justifiable, suggests that as long as we the upright white
citizens are not at risk of being tortured and the victims are people
we do not care about – insignificant to our lives, disposable in
terms of our economy, dark skinned, or
believing in the wrong god, then torture is okay. Because “better
safe than sorry”, “it might work”, “they made us do it”.
And we also don't care about the innocents who die from “targeted
drone attacks” and random air strikes. After all “you can't make
an omlette without breaking some eggs.” Our self respect is
collateral damage. Appeasement:
Both Romney and Obama
say that Sony should have called the hackers' bluff and released 'The
Interview'. Wonder what they would have said if a few theaters had
been blown up?

Even
More, Even Worse;
The slaughter and disposal of the 43 Mexican students “was
planned, executed, and supervised by Mexico’s federal police” to
quash the political activism of students from Ayotozinapa's teacher
training college. What are the odds that a US governmental agency was
involved in some way?

Take
That!
A bill pending in Missouri will require women to get permission from
the presumptive father before getting an abortion. Curveball:
What if the concept of “the business cycle” is as ephemeral as
the current recovery? Or rather, what if the so-called recovery
portion of the current business cycle is
proof that there's no such thing as a 'cycle'? What if the long
undulating upward long-term growth trend was attributable to
something other than karma? Like the consumption of cheap and
accessible fossil fuels that are now neither quite so accessible and
nor so cheap causing things to fall apart?

Friday, December 19, 2014

The
Other Guy Did It: Vladimir
has
told all the little Ivans that the big bad wolves in the US and
Europe are jealous and have conspired to thrust the Russian economy
into a recession that could last at least two years. He is not all
wrong, either. But never fear, Putin
will
persecute enough journalists and gays to make everything all right.
Very far right..

They
Knew:
As far back as 2009, the CIA knew and tried to warn the
administration that assassinating “high-value” terrorist targets
(mostly via drones) does
little good and “boosts support for terror groups.” Didn't keep
Barak from continuing and intensifying the program, and the problems.

Mummies
The Word: A recently discovered
ancient burial site in Egypt contains tens
of thousands of
mummified remains – perhaps more than a million.

Shacking
Up:Credit
derivative gamblers have bet some $25 billion on how long Radio Shack
can keep tottering on the brink of bankruptcy before plunging into
the abyss. But those who will profit more by a longer deathspiral
are cheating – they're helping keep the company afloat – not in
hopes of making it a going concern, but in order to make more from
its demise. Ah, capitalism.

Scales
of Justice:
The EU's highest court has ruled that fat people are victims of a
disability and enjoy all the protections and benefits that the lame,
the halt and the blind receive. Wait till folks in Middle
America
hear the good news. Then
I Sat
Down At The Piano:The
Fed has
stopped
using any of
the traditional statistical benchmarks
because the
economy is not improving anywhere near the way the numbers claim. So
now, in place of relying on unreliable data, the oracles will simply
make pronouncements. You know, like Alan used to do.

Go
Away, Y'bother'n Me:
The Swiss, trying to keep the money fleeing the ruble collapse from
damaging the franc, are
going to start charging customers 0.25% for the privilege of holding
cash in Swiss banks.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Glass
Houses:
US politicians and pundit should take a break from the premature
celebration of the ruble's collapse and try to figure out how
much damage low oil prices are goingto do here at home - it's not
just their problem.
Could Russia eventually default?
Yes. Would it have an even
worse impact on the world's economy than Lehman's collapse? You
bet. Would an economic collapse unseat
Putin? No, not for a couple of years at least, and in the
interim he'll be even more nationalistic, aggressive and dangerous.
The Russian people want a strong leader, and a
few missed meals will be a small price to pay for what they see
as Russia regaining its place in the world. Stocking
Stuffer:
Religion aside, studies can find no empirical evidence that
suggests that the private sector is any more efficient than public
undertakings.

Bankruptcy:
Iraq, pleading poverty, has asked Kuwait if it could defer making
scheduled reparation payments for the oil facilities Saddam destroyed
before the US destroyed Iraq. Why
does current day Iraq have to pay for the crap that Saddam did?

Gobblization:
Economic research suggests that buying all that stuff from Walmart
has sent 3.2 million US jobs to China. When they ship all those conexes back to China they fill 'em with jobs, our jobs.

Just
Because:Marco
Rubio (Wannabe-FL),
in an effort to draw publicity and keep the South Miami Cuban vote)
has promised to block Obama's efforts to normalize US/Cuban
relations, which have been frozen for twenty more years than Rubio's
been alive. To no good end. Both, actually, the embargo and Rubio.Entrails:
November's CPI fell 0.3% m/m, but fell only(?)
0.1%
if you didn't drive to the grocery store. This is the largest
decline since Dec
2008. So
much for any rate hike from the Fed anytime soon. Housing
permits issued last month fell 5.2% and housing starts fell 1.6%
m/m.

Union
Cards:
NY Gov. Andrew (I'm Not Mario) Cuomo has notified about a thousand
state employees that they are managers or hold 'confidential'
positions and thus can no longer belong to the public employees
union, because the
union doesn't always
agree with him.

Essay
Question:Why
are
commodity prices falling? For extra credit, define “bubble.” Impact
Wrench:
Texas has been home to 40% of all the
new
jobs created since June 2009. In 2013, the city of Houston had more
housing starts than all of California. Much of
this is due
directly to oil. Nowoil's
impact is likely to be more negative than positive, with lower
employment and the negative effects that'll have in the state. We've
seen this movie before
and we know how it ends. The oil-rig count is already dropping, and
it will continue to drop as long as oil stays below $60. Yes,
US oil production may rise a bit next year as projects that are
50-60% done now
are completed,
but after that production and new drilling will both begin to fall,
and then
employment and construction
and all the consumer stuff based on the oil fields will crater and
investors will flee the oil patch. Saudi Arabia is betting on it.

Be
Of Good Cheer:The
number of first-year law students in the US is at a 40-year low.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

The
March of Civilization:
ISIS has executed 150 Iraqi women for refusing to marry ISIS
fighters and continues
to crucify, behead and stone to death Iraqi children.
The Taliban have slaughtered over 140 children at a school in
Peshawar because the don't want little girls to go to school. In
Yemen a car bomb killed 25 people, including 15 school children.
Mexican
authorities “ ‘knew about attack on [the 43] students as it
happened,” did nothing to stop it, and have covered it up since. Just
So Stories:
The US hanged Japanese officers for waterboarding prisoners.

Contagion:The
economic sanctions and the fall in the price of oil have bitten
Russia on the ass, with vengence. The state raised interest rates to
17% in an attempt to stop the downward spiral, but it only encouraged
the vultures to push the value of the ruble even lower. It's now
lost about 50%
of its value in six months. Russians who have foreign currency
denominated mortgages are drowning. Those who have any cash on hand
are buying
up anything and everything as prices spiral
out of control. The stock market, naturally, is crashing.
“Catastrophe”
is a good description.It'll
be good tomorrow, too. Obama, always a reasonble fellow, will
sign the legislation imposing
even more economic sanctions on Russia and supplying weaponry to
Ukraine. His Special
Forces troops are conducting “urban training” in downtown
Dallas. Lessons
Learned:
Half of American thinks torturing people, some innocent, some not,
was a good idea, that
it saved
American lives, and would do it again. Propaganda works.

Under
The Bed:
The inflation monster that the right has warned us about for years as
they whittled away at government services is not only in is in
hiding, it's disappeared
down the drain as investors disregard any chance of inflation
returning for years, maybe decades. But don't expect the specter
to go away – David Koch, for
example, whines “I’m
very worried that if the budget is not balanced that inflation could
occur and my
brother and Ithe economy of our
country could suffer terribly.”
He knows better; he just wants you to suffer.

Price
Tags:
A review of British operations in Afghanistan's Helmand province
noted that “of all the thousands of civilians and combatants”
killed or wounded “not
a single al-Qaida operative or international terrorist” who could
conceivably have threatened the UK was killed or captured.

Fine
Print:
If Richard Bruce Cheney, a former acting
President of the United States, is so sure those 'enhanced
interrogation techniques' were not torture, why doesn't he let us
waterboard and rectal feed him for a week or two, daily, at noon, on
live TV?

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.